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February/March 2014 Lite Challenge: The Little Mermaid ! :)

Anyone interested in reading the tale can do so here, where they have a great translation.

The part that struck me was right at the beginning:

Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass. But it is very deep too. It goes down deeper than any anchor rope will go, and many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live.

Now don't suppose that there are only bare white sands at the bottom of the sea. No indeed! The most marvelous trees and flowers grow down there, with such pliant stalks and leaves that the least stir in the water makes them move about as though they were alive. All sorts of fish, large and small, dart among the branches, just as birds flit through the trees up here. From the deepest spot in the ocean rises the palace of the sea king. Its walls are made of coral and its high pointed windows of the clearest amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells that open and shut with the tide. This is a wonderful sight to see, for every shell holds glistening pearls, any one of which would be the pride of a queen's crown.

I haven't started yet.. I'm picking my palette! Don't think you all want to see that boring part? D:

I need to show the under-sea stuff, of course, and I also need to show the above-ground stuff... the palace and temple.

And... no idea how to do that.

I used a california coastline as a reference and sketched in some mountainous land AND sea features. Then I used gimp's "cartoon" effect to outline my water features (and on the land features layer so they would look like they go together)

Then I painted some not-at-all-detailed coral reefs and did the same effect on them.

Then I duplicated all my layers and started painting them in.

Oh, and I tried to sketch a mermaid (not to scale) for the border... ignore her, she's just there for my inspiration

Here's what I have so far...

The outlines only, against the beginning colors you what you see above:

And with all my layers showing ( ):

And... I really don't like it, I'll probably start over at some point, but at least it's an update

I use stacks of transparent layers to create the effects of depth in water, in my maps. I create several stacked layers of terrain: beach above water, beach below the surf, sea bottom in the lagoon, lower sea bottom past the coral reef, muddy sea floor at deeper levels. Then I place rectangles of varying shades of blue with varying levels of transparency anywhere between 20% to 80% transparency. These rectangles are placed below each subsequent sea floor level. Thus the deeper areas are getting progressively darker blue, less transparent, and colors fade to nearly non-existent. Very much as vision and color is lessened the deeper you go.

Here, check out my Ryukyo, Sea Dragon City map. Although the final map is in the Finished Map Forum, you can see some of the steps of development in the WIP forum.

I actually really like it. I like how we can look at the land and the sea at the same time. The angle you've chosen for the map gives that nice transition between the sea and the land. It's a good start so far. Also really looking forward to seeing how that mermaid turns out. Hey, maybe she can have my serpent as a pet??